Linden Lab / Second Life

I am passionate about the user experience!

I will help you translate your business requirements into user stories, and turn your user stories into beautiful and user-friendly wireframes, designs, and prototypes.

me_RSwedding

Over ten years experience creating award-winning web and mobile applications

I specialize in solving interesting product and design challenges for both nonprofits and creative startups.

My projects have won a Webby award and two awards from the American Association of Museums, and I have developed beautiful and usable designs for organizations such as Wellesley College and the PBS news documentary series FRONTLINE.

In addition, I have worked at Linden Lab and Eventbrite, guiding development teams in building strong and popular products.

A PDF portfolio of recent work is available upon request.

When I’m not working on projects, I do pottery at Ruby’s Clay Studio, force my friends to visit museums with me, and practice my public speaking at Toastmasters.

I’ve been told I’m both funny and the “mistress of persistence”. I assume both were meant as compliments.

"Dana always managed to add a creative angle over and above what was needed"
—Manager at Entropy Media

Portfolio

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Linden Lab / Second Life

The Second Life website and its components were an essential part of the Second Life experience.

Program Management

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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The MFA, Boston website leverages their vast art collection information in interesting ways.

Product Mgmt + UX

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Eventbrite Blog

The Eventbrite blog redesign established Eventbrite as a thought leader in the ticketing industry.

Product Mgmt + UX

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International Museum of Women

IMOW raises awareness about women’s issues and inspires action.

Product Mgmt + UX

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Lobby Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

The lobby kiosk gets visitors excited about the art they are soon to see.

Design + Development

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Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

The GGNPC controls the largest network of urban national parks in the country.

Product Mgmt + UX

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FRONTLINE

The FRONTLINE website allows users to explore the content from the news series in depth.

Design + Development

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Kiki Smith Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

This kiosk provides rich information about the exhibition and its curator.

Design + Development

Contact

Dana Lamb / Designer + Product Manager

Drop me a line if you’re interested in working together! I am currently accepting interesting projects from interesting people.

And let me know if you’d like to see a PDF portfolio of recent work. It is available upon request.

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Linden Lab / Second Life

The Second Life websites are an essential part of the Second Life experience. As Web Program Manager, I oversaw all web development projects at Linden Lab, from large to small.

Responsibilities

  • Web Program Management

Work Overview

I took a broad view of the vast web product development happening at Linden Lab. I focused on large projects such as the complete site redesign, development processes such as adding a standard web release schedule, and small projects such as adding sharing features to the web and software applications.

Complete website redesign

When I arrived at Linden Lab, the website redesign project was already over a month late, and it had yet to launch. The project had multiple dispirited dev teams working simultaneously, and required leadership to bring them in line and guide the different components to launch. I worked with each team and our VP of Web to troubleshoot, define a new, realistic launch date, and keep scope creep in check. Once we had a new date, we launched on time and with no hitches. And then we celebrated.

Social initiative, and acquisition of Avatars United

We created the Social Initiative to enable and encourage users to easily share their amazing experiences in Second Life with their friends and peers. Before we started, this was surprisingly difficult.

To jumpstart the initiative, we acquired the firm Enemy Unknown, which brought with it a loyal fan/customer base and a product built around social sharing. I guided the AU team as they joined the Linden Lab team, helping them get up to speed with our agile development process, and working with them to define the integration of their product with ours.

Our accomplishments included:

  • Adding social sharing features to the Second Life software product
  • Modifying the architecture of locations within Second Life so they can be easily shared with outside users
  • Surfacing SL profiles to the web (instead of only being available within the software application)
  • Inclusion of automated testing and test-driven development, thereby shortening the time required to launch
Web-based sidebar within Second Life application

Second Life is a software application instead of a web application, which means product updates rarely happen. We changed the sidebar within the software to be web-based, which then allowed us to make updates to the sidebar whenever we wanted instead of waiting for a software update. This was a huge win. I guided the project from concept, to design, to dev and launch, ensuring the product was fully localized and bug-free.

Slideshow Information

  • Integration of Avatars United user profiles with Second Life
  • Web-based sidebar in Second Life application
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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 03/05/2013
  • Category Program Management  
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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

I managed work for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for over a year, guiding award-winning projects from concept to completion.

Responsibilities

  • Product Management
  • UX Design
  • Project and Team Management

Project Details

Two highlights of my work for the MFA are the Educators Online Resource, which was a Webby Honoree, and the Interactive Tours.

I served as Producer on both projects, doing user research, defining the functionality, and managing the designers and developers through launch.

Educators Online Resource

Since the MFA had recently completed the massive task of moving their entire art collection information online, a next step was to allow educators to leverage this information to create lesson plans for their classrooms.

I did extensive research, including interviewing teachers to understand how they prepare for classes and how they use technology (if at all). Once I translated this into user experiences and flows, I hired our designer, and managed the project through development to launch.

The Webby folks understood that this was a thoughtful and innovative project, and named the product a Webby Honoree.

Online Tours

The Interactive Online Tours were another way to leverage the MFA’s vast collection and honor the MFA’s goal of educating the public. Each tour is a selection of art displayed as a slideshow, and MFA staff can easily assemble these interactive tours via their existing CMS.

The project proved so useful that the tours are still in use in their original form six years later.

Slideshow Information

  • Educators Online Resource: homepage
  • Educators Online Resource: user-created gallery
  • Educators Online Resource: browse
  • Online Tour: Director’s Choice Online Audio Tour

Note: both projects were designed by the fantastic Kiko Taganashi

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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 12/01/2012
  • Category Product Management  UX  
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Eventbrite Blog

The Eventbrite blog redesign established Eventbrite as a thought leader in the ticketing industry.

Responsibilities

  • Program & Product Management
  • UX Design

Project Goals

The goal of the blog redesign was to:

  • increase the number of unique visitors to the blog
  • increase the amount of time visitors spend on the blog
  • establish Eventbrite as a thought leader in the ticketing industry.

Project Details

As the Program Manager on the project, I defined the project requirements, assembled a team of in-house designers, hired an outside firm to do the development, and coordinated with our company’s engineering department to ensure a smooth development process.

Our previous blog homepage had a traditional and staid list of articles. For the new blog, we wanted the layout to illustrate that we were forward-thinking and modern, and we wanted the content to grab users’ interest right away.

To do this, I designed the wireframes so there would be different paths into the content for different types of visitors.

For example, at the top of the homepage, featured articles are listed from several different categories. This way, event planners can quickly jump to information relevant to them, industry news indicates our insight in the tech field, and fun articles are shown to keep visitors engaged and amused.

One of our amazing in-house UX designers worked with me to structure the blog categories and to advise on the wireframe process, and our talented visual designers built on our work to create a beautiful interface.

Slideshow information:

  • Wireframe for blog homepage
  • Blog homepage
  • Wireframe for blog entry
  • Blog entry
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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/29/2012
  • Category Product Management  UX  
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International Museum of Women

The IMOW is an online museum whose goal is to raise awareness about women’s issues around the globe and to inspire action.

Project Goals

For the project, we were to:

  • create a vibrant online community space
  • design a new online exhibition about women in the political sphere
  • bring the existing site’s design up-to-date
  • support four different languages, including a right-to-left language (Arabic)

Responsibilities

  • Product Management
  • UX Design
  • User Testing
  • Project and Team Management

Project Details

This project had many moving parts, and had the added constraint of having a fixed launch date, which was International Women’s Day. This was also the day of IMOW’s annual black-tie gala.

The new online exhibition, the community, and the site redesign needed to be ready and working by the gala since they would be projected on large screens that would be controlled by the public.

I worked with the client to understand the user needs, define the site’s functionality, and determine the UI by creating user personas, user scenarios, and wireframes. I also helped them select a platform for their online community.
Once the detailed specification was complete, I hired talented visual designers, and managed their process and the budget. I strove to delicately balance matching the client’s expectations with ensuring the designers needs were met so they could produce quality work.

Once design was complete, I worked with our in-house development team while they executed on the designs and the specifications. We closely monitored scope creep to keep the project on schedule, and thoroughly tested the product so there would be no surprises on launch day.

At the gala, the client was thrilled with the outcome.

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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/28/2012
  • Category Product Management  UX  
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Lobby Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

This lobby kiosk provides visitors with crucial introductory information about the museum, and it gets them excited about the art they are soon to see.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Development
  • Product Consulting

Project Details

I worked with the museum to define the product and ensure it would not just be something “cool” in the lobby but would also provide clear benefit for visitors.

The visual designs showcased the museum’s modernity while still having a painterly aspect, reflecting the variety of the museum’s collection. The key visual element in the designs is the use of steps. These reflect the iconic stairways in the center of the museum as well as the museum’s stepped roof.

It was crucial that the non-technical staff at the museum be able to change the kiosk’s content without learning Flash, so I built the product in Flash while keeping the content in a separate XML file. This way, the team could change content regularly and easily.

The new kiosk was in place and ready for its debut when the museum reopened after renovations!

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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/27/2012
  • Category Design + Development  Product Management  UX  
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Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Responsibilities

  • Product Management
  • UX Design
  • Project Management

Project Details

The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy controls the largest network of urban national parks in the country.

I was responsible for the complete redesign of the website for the GGNPC and its child organizations, the Crissy Field Center and the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory.

I met with the client to determine their needs, did competitive analysis and research with potential users, and then used this information to document the new site architecture, schematics and feature definitions.

I then guided the project through the design, development, QA and launch processes.

Site features included an online store, calendar and registration, interactive map, and CMS.

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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/27/2012
  • Category Product Management  UX  
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FRONTLINE

The FRONTLINE website allows users to explore the content from the news in depth and at their own pace.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Front End Development
  • Video Digitization

Project Details

During the television season, the news documentary series FRONTLINE airs weekly, and each film has an accompanying mini-site. Each mini site has its own look and feel while still maintaining FRONTLINE’s brand.

I designed sites, pages, and special features to illustrate complicated concepts, and then built them in cross-browser and -platform compatible front end code.

When we launched the video streaming initiative (before Hulu and Netflix!), I digitized and encoded over thirty hours of video to stream on FRONTLINE’s site, and I built the module to stream video in multiple formats.

Slideshow Information

  • “Memory of the Camps” mini-site homepage
  • Global navigation bar that I incorporated into FRONTLINE’s thousands of pages
  • FRONTLINE Teacher Center
  • Informational graphic for “Isreal’s Next War?” mini-site
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  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/27/2012
  • Category Design + Development  

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Kiki Smith Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

Through the use of video, images, and text, this interactive kiosk provided rich information about the exhibition curated by renowned contemporary artist Kiki Smith.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Development
  • Product Consulting

Project Details

When Wellesley’s Davis Museum and contemporary artist Kiki Smith decided to create a new exhibition at Wellesley College, they recruited me to design a product that guided users in viewing the exhibition.

The goal of the kiosk was threefold:

  • To help visitors understand Kiki’s working process
  • To teach visitors about the objects chosen by Kiki
  • To guide users in thinking critically about the exhibition

I worked with the museum to understand the exhibition and Kiki Smith’s intentions, and then I created clear user paths through the content.

Next I designed the kiosk to reflect the modernity of the museum while at the same time using key visual elements from the exhibition such as the earthy color scheme, cubbies, and decoupage used by Kiki.

With the designs complete, I built the application in Flash from start to finish, testing it throughout to ensure it was bug-free.

The product launched on time and on budget, and the client was thrilled with the outcome.

Next Case Study → ← Previous Case Study
  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/20/2012
  • Category Design + Development  Product Management  UX  

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Lobby Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

This lobby kiosk provides visitors with crucial introductory information about the museum, and it gets them excited about the art they are soon to see.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Development
  • Product Consulting

Project Details

I worked with the museum to define the product and ensure it would not just be something “cool” in the lobby but would also provide clear benefit for visitors.

The visual designs showcased the museum’s modernity while still having a painterly aspect, reflecting the variety of the museum’s collection. The key visual element in the designs is the use of steps. These reflect the iconic stairways in the center of the museum as well as the museum’s stepped roof.

It was crucial that the non-technical staff at the museum be able to change the kiosk’s content without learning Flash, so I built the product in Flash while keeping the content in a separate XML file. This way, the team could change content regularly and easily.

The new kiosk was in place and ready for its debut when the museum reopened after renovations!

Next Case Study → ← Previous Case Study
  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/27/2012
  • Category Design + Development  Product Management  UX  
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  • oswald
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FRONTLINE

The FRONTLINE website allows users to explore the content from the news in depth and at their own pace.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Front End Development
  • Video Digitization

Project Details

During the television season, the news documentary series FRONTLINE airs weekly, and each film has an accompanying mini-site. Each mini site has its own look and feel while still maintaining FRONTLINE’s brand.

I designed sites, pages, and special features to illustrate complicated concepts, and then built them in cross-browser and -platform compatible front end code.

When we launched the video streaming initiative (before Hulu and Netflix!), I digitized and encoded over thirty hours of video to stream on FRONTLINE’s site, and I built the module to stream video in multiple formats.

Slideshow Information

  • “Memory of the Camps” mini-site homepage
  • Global navigation bar that I incorporated into FRONTLINE’s thousands of pages
  • FRONTLINE Teacher Center
  • Informational graphic for “Isreal’s Next War?” mini-site
Next Case Study → ← Previous Case Study
  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/27/2012
  • Category Design + Development  

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You must be logged in to post a comment.

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Kiki Smith Kiosk
Wellesley College Museum

Through the use of video, images, and text, this interactive kiosk provided rich information about the exhibition curated by renowned contemporary artist Kiki Smith.

Responsibilities

  • Visual Design
  • Development
  • Product Consulting

Project Details

When Wellesley’s Davis Museum and contemporary artist Kiki Smith decided to create a new exhibition at Wellesley College, they recruited me to design a product that guided users in viewing the exhibition.

The goal of the kiosk was threefold:

  • To help visitors understand Kiki’s working process
  • To teach visitors about the objects chosen by Kiki
  • To guide users in thinking critically about the exhibition

I worked with the museum to understand the exhibition and Kiki Smith’s intentions, and then I created clear user paths through the content.

Next I designed the kiosk to reflect the modernity of the museum while at the same time using key visual elements from the exhibition such as the earthy color scheme, cubbies, and decoupage used by Kiki.

With the designs complete, I built the application in Flash from start to finish, testing it throughout to ensure it was bug-free.

The product launched on time and on budget, and the client was thrilled with the outcome.

Next Case Study → ← Previous Case Study
  • Author danalamb
  • Date 11/20/2012
  • Category Design + Development  Product Management  UX  

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.